Throughout this application, various references are cited to describe more fully the state of the art to which this invention pertains. The disclosures of these references are hereby incorporated by reference into the present disclosure in their entirety.
The use of implanted medical devices is a vital component of current clinical practice, however, complications may arise from their use. Common complications are the physical trauma to the patient's tissues resulting from insertion and continued use of the device, as well as the potential for the device to serve as a focus for microbial contamination and thus, a possible source for microbial infection of the patient. In fact, these complications are often associated since the placement of a medical device, such as a urethral catheter or ureteral stent, may cause tearing and bleeding of delicate tissues thereby creating an opportunity for infection through microbial contamination of the device or through subsequent migration of microbes along the device's surface. It has been therefore desirable to develop better quality in-dwelling biomedical devices made from materials that provide for clinical advantages to a patient.
In response to the problem of insertion-related trauma, polymeric medical devices have been coated with various hydrophilic polymers to produce a more low friction or lubricious coating on the device. The coated devices have high friction surfaces when dry, but upon wetting the devices become slippery and can be more readily inserted into veins, arteries, and other passageways causing minimal tissue damage.
Most of the current grafting methods are resource and time intensive procedures that require multiple manual steps of dipping and waiting, followed by the manual transfer of the devices from one solution to the next. In between each solution submersion step, conventional devices are dried, adding to the time required to complete the grafting method. For example, a grafting method is described in Applicant's WO 02/070022, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. However, the method comprises intermediate steps of drying and is relatively time and resource intensive since only one device is coated at a time.
There is thus a need to develop an efficient and effective apparatus and system for photo-grafting a coating polymer onto the surface of a medical device, as well as methods and systems incorporating said grafting station, so as to produce clinically useful medical devices having consistent desirable properties of lubricious surfaces and anti-microbial activity, thus obviating at least one problem with that of the prior art.